The words and the verdicts on Oscars 2025.
Animated Feature Film
Nominees: Flow, Inside Out 2, Memoir Of A Snail, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, The Wild Robot
Four of the five nominees have been released in Thai cinemas, and Wallace & Gromit is streaming. Flow, the dark horse (or dark cat) from Latvia, has the distinction of being nominated for Best International Feature as well. The picture-book perfect, dialogue-free adventure follows a nameless cat and his co-survivors (a golden retriever, a capybara, a lemur, etc) on a watery journey after a Biblical flood. Since its premiere in Cannes, it has become one of the most admired films of the past year. But Flow's European sensibility may be outshone by the warm-heartedness of The Wild Robot, another best-reviewed film of 2024. It's a great year for animated feature films regardless of who takes the Oscar on Monday morning.
International Feature
Nominees: Emilia Perez (France), I'm Still Here (Brazil), The Girl With The Needle (Denmark), The Seed With The Sacred Fig (Germany), Flow (Latvia)
We gasped, not with awe but with disbelief, when Emilia Perez scored 13 nominations, more than any other films in the awards season, including the Best International Feature battle. Gag us from spouting unprintable exclamations! Emilia Perez (representing France but mostly speaking Spanish) is a laboured, disingenuous story about a transgender Mexican drug lord, told as a musical, and including a narrative beat where the protagonist has a sex-change operation in Bangkok (not real Bangkok, but a soundstage mocked up as a hospital). Some people enjoy the film; others find it a vacuous, try-hard attempt to cook up a sensational melodrama around a hot-button gender issue. Then Oscars politics hit like a 10kg bag of cocaine when the film's lead actress, Karla Sofia Gascon, was revealed to have made unbecoming remarks about Muslims and George Floyd -- dulling its shine. Emilia Perez still leads, though I believe Water Salles' I'm Still Here will upset it. The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, representing Germany though made in Iran and about Iranian social politics, also deserves recognition (it's showing in Thai cinemas now).
No Other Land. imdb.com
Cinematography
Nominees: Lol Crawley (The Brutalist), Greig Fraser (Dune: Part Two), Paul Guilhaume (Emilia Perez), Ed Lachman (Maria), Jarin Blaschke (Nosferatu)
Greig Fraser won from Dune: Part One. His work on Part Two is ravishing, but another win would seem redundant. Dune and Emilia Perez were shot on digital cameras, while The Brutalist, Maria and Nosferatu were shot on analogue film. In this year's Best Cinematography race, Lol Crawley's use of Vista Vision -- a special format of 35mm film developed in the 1950s -- has stirred much excitement among tech-heads, and the result on-screen is a fascinating texture of a vintage film look without appearing artificially filtered, as when you shoot on digital and strive to make it look like film. In wide frames, the film looks angular and grandiose; in close-up, the fine grains make the intimacy all the more irresistible. So that's it: Crawley will win his first Oscar for The Brutalist.
Documentary Feature
Nominees: Black Box Diary, Porcelain War, No Other Land, Soundtrack To A Coup D'état, Sugarcane
A vital category often overlooked, the Oscar for best documentary presents the ultimate challenge to the voters' moral courage. In short, will they dare give the prize to No Other Land, a film that presents damning evidence on the inhuman treatment of the Palestinian people in the West Bank by the occupation army? The film won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival last year (an awkward moment for the German officials present) and also at the Independent Spirit Awards last week. Directed by Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli Yuval Abraham, No Other Land is a "frontrunner", strictly in the apostrophes since its cinematic and journalistic power is leveraged by the cynical dynamics of geopolitics, World War II hangover and the history of American film industry itself. If it is snubbed, the prize should go to Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack To A Coup D'état, a jazzy collage of archival footage that examines the colonial legacy in the Republic of Congo. No Other Land is in cinemas this week; Soundtrack was released earlier and might return again.
Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce in The Brutalist. imdb.com
Adapted Screenplay
Nominees: A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Emilia Perez, Nickel Boys, Sing Sing
Nickel Boys or Conclave? Will Conclave win anything? That seems like a blatant shut-out to a very solid film. But given that this is an American award, Nickel Boys, a race drama set in a juvenile centre in the 1960s, seems to have an edge. A tight call to Nickel Boys.
Original Screenplay
Nominees: Anora, The Brutalist, A Real Pain, September 5, The Substance
The Substance, written by Coralie Fargeat, won Best Screenplay at Cannes Film Festival last year, when everybody thought what it should have won was Best Directing. At the Oscars, I doubt it will fare well against stronger scripts such as The Brutalist (written by Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold) or A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg). It's known that the screenplay prizes often go to smaller films with sharp writing and delivery, so in this setup A Real Pain looks like a shoo-in. Eisenberg -- some of us still remember him as Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network -- has come into his own as a solid writer-director in a film about two Jewish cousins who reunite in Poland for a Holocaust tour. Kieran Culkin will win Best Supporting Actor from the film too.
Timothee Chalamet in A Complete Unknown. imdb.com
Actress
Nominees: Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Karla Sofia Gascon (Emilia Perez), Mikey Madison (Anora), Demi Moore (The Substance), Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here)
Even without the self-inflicted damage from Emilia Perez's Karla Sofia Gascon, the scenario in which the Oscars honour a transgender actress appears slim. It's either Demi Moore from The Substance, going meta in her role as an ageing Hollywood actress fighting misogyny, patriarchy and irreversible biology to remain relevant; or Mikey Madison from Anora, so committed, so watchable in her turn as an expletive-machine/stripper whose girlboss veneer finally cracks in the film's moving final scene. Fernanda Torres may have bagged the Golden Globe, but the momentum remains on Moore's side (also winning the Globe) and Madison (BAFTA, Independent Spirit Award). Moore's win will guarantee a memorable speech -- another meta moment for her and the industry that glorified, then discarded, then resurrected her career. It's the kind of redemptive plot that Hollywood loves, so that seals it. The Substance was released in Thailand to meagre interest last year; it's time to put it back on the marquee.
Actor
Nominees: Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice)
For tragi-comic effects, give this one to Sebastian Stan, who plays young Donald Trump with oily smarm and a revolting smirk in The Apprentice (the film was released in Thailand, but with little fanfare) just so Hollywood can stick it to the Orange Man's anatomical part. But it's not going to happen. Ralph Fiennes in the papal drama Conclave has racked up mileage after his Bafta win, but the Brit is not going to break through the Oscars' force field here. This race comes down to either Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, or Adrien Brody as a tortured Hungarian architect adrift and abused by American capitalism in The Brutalist. It would be Chalamet's first; it would be Brody's second, after The Pianist in 2003, where he also plays a Jew in World War II. Haunted and gaunt, like a ghost that doesn't yet known it's already dead, Brody is the clear favourite. Chalamet -- not a complete unknown, but certainly like a rolling stone -- will have to wait for his next nomination. (Both A Complete Unknown and The Brutalist are in cinemas this week.)
Karla Sofía Gascón and Adriana Paz in Emilia Perez. imdb.com
Directing
Nominees: Sean Baker (Anora), Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), James Mangold (A Complete Unknown), Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)
For sheer control and ambition, Brady Corbet will arrive at the Oscars with a halo adorning his head. Sean Baker is a cinephiles' hero (do you follow his Letterbox reviews?) and Anora is such a rambunctious striptease anti-epic. The only woman in the picks, Frenchwoman Coralie Fargeat from The Substance, is all fun and no subtlety. I wish Baker would win, but Corbet will.
Best Picture
Nominees: Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Perez, I'm Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, Wicked
Anything is fine as long as it's not Emilia Perez. Two titles ahead of the pack are Anora and The Brutalist. The protagonists in both films are immigrants who chase the American Dream only to find themselves, each in their own way, trapped in the American Nightmare. Both are about the exploitation of talent, of artists, of hearts so pure. And given the current politics on immigration, we can expect agenda-pushing speeches no matter who wins. The Brutalist is a maximalist film despite it being about architectural minimalism; Anora is a circus of joy and chaos, a carefree look at life and love at their most unpredictable. The intellectual will favour The Brutalist -- its deliberate, sombre jarring of themes, its lament over American pragmatism clashing with European sensibilities. The sensualist, the hedonist, the horde of lovelorn Gen X-Y-Zers will go for Anora. For better or worse, let's be a sensualist for once and cheer for Anora on Monday.
The Wild Robot. imdb.com
